


Fabrication

by aetataureate



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Regret, the suprising Stanley Cup dominance of expansion teams in the Check Please universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23632672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aetataureate/pseuds/aetataureate
Summary: Kent Parson owns a jersey with Jack Zimmermann’s name on it. It’s basically a joke.
Relationships: mention of Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, past Kent "Parse" Parson/Jack Zimmermann - Relationship
Comments: 15
Kudos: 56





	Fabrication

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this](https://www.checkpleasecomic.com/extras-blog/ks-jam-13), which was definitely meant to be a joke

Kent Parson owns a jersey with Jack Zimmermann’s name on it. He bought it on a whim.

***

The first time Kent’s dad came for the money was before he even had money. Jack’s dad’s lawyer fended him off, and after that, Kent had his own lawyer. The end result is that off the ice, he is extremely well-protected. He has quarterly meetings with financial guys, who come with charts about what happens if he blows his knee out at twenty-six, if that nagging hip thing gets him at thirty-two, if he beats the odds and cruises into a victory lap at forty. He’s paying a small fortune every season to insure various parts of himself. If he eats it in a traffic accident or something, his mom is taken care of, as is the animal shelter off Decatur.

In every scenario, Kent Parson is richer than God, which means he has a ridiculously high budget for whims. The animal shelter was the first place he ever spent any of it, after the draft but before he even showed up for training camp. He’d never had a pet before, obviously, because his mom didn’t have time and then Jack was allergic. He would have never risked Jack’s game like that, not when one period spent sneezy and red-eyed could mean the difference between the number one and the number three pick.

Of course, it turned out that Kent could’ve had a cat the entire time, since Jack didn’t give a _fuck_ about messing with his own game.

Now, Kent has a Stanley Cup ring on his finger. He wears a thirty thousand dollar watch, and he owns a boat even though he lives in the middle of the desert. Like thousands of other people, he owns a Zimmermann jersey. It was a whim. What about it?

***

Kent Parson owns a jersey with Jack Zimmermann’s name on it. It’s basically a joke.

***

Back in Juniors, Kent had kept one of Jack’s reject jerseys, a misprint with only one N. He used to wear it sometimes, because it was funny and it made Jack mad. Once, the summer before the draft, he wore it when they—

In 2009, the draft was held in Montreal. It was the scariest day of Kent’s life. He had spent the night at Jack’s house, but his mom was over too, so he stayed in the guest room. He was nervous, so he went to bed early. He was up at dawn, and chatted with Alicia while she made a special breakfast. She sent him to go get Jack up, and then—

There was an empty seat next to him at the Bell Centre that day. Someone had gotten him in a suit, put him in a car, walked him down the aisle. The empty seat was like a gravestone. Before that morning, Kent had assumed the only thing that could have kept Jack from the draft was death. He was almost right. Still, he was surprised when he went first. He had gotten used to the idea of going back to New York.

Kent knew hours before Jack did that Jack wouldn’t play professional hockey in 2009. He knew days before Jack did that there was a better-than-even chance he wouldn’t play at all. It might have even been weeks—Kent wouldn’t know, he was long gone by then. He was so mad at him.

Kent was already known in Juniors for playing dirty hockey. It was reckless: Jack called it fearless. Jack being gone made him smarter. It made him a better player, and a leader on and off the ice. It probably won him a Calder.

That fucking Calder. It’s, like, twenty percent of the reason he wanted Jack on the Aces with him. Kent even had permission from management to go talk to him—it was all aboveboard. But Jack had _flipped_ , like Kent was trying to sell him drugs or something. Jack, apparently, does not love him anymore. Jack maybe doesn’t even _want_ him anymore, might not even miss him, and now every Aces-Falcs contest for the rest of his life will be an attempt to answer a question without an answer. Who deserves _his_ Cup, _his_ Calder, even after Jack has his own Cup and his own Calder. His career is a counterfactual. He’s what happened to hockey when Jack Zimmermann didn’t.

The jersey is irrelevant. Kent owns a lot of jerseys. He wore Steve Yzerman’s to pieces as a kid. He bought Marney’s when he transferred to the Bruins, posted a selfie with it when the kid was worried about hard feelings and the rumor mill. For a little while, he had let himself picture a black jersey with the number one on the back, which was stupid anyway. It’s basically a joke. Kent knows how to laugh at himself: ha, ha. See? The joke’s on him.

***

Kent Parson owns a jersey with Jack Zimmermann’s name on it. He was drunk when he bought it.

***

Kent is a really great guy to chill in a bar with. He’s fun at parties, too, even if Jack is embarrassed by him meeting his college friends or whatever. His secret, which none of the young guys believe, is that he’s naturally outgoing and always two drinks more sober than the next person. Kent doesn’t drink that much—not because his body is a temple, or anything stupid like that. If anything, his body is a poker table. If you put down everything you have, if you’re very good and then you’re very, very lucky, you just might have a shot at beating the house. If there’s one thing being his father’s son taught Kent, it’s that you should never drink and gamble.

Kent’s gotten very lucky, and he’s very, very good. Las Vegas turned out to be the right place for him, against all odds. He’s played some beautiful hockey. He and the club have remade each other in their images. He’s pretty much a franchise player, which surprises him. It implies a level of commitment that he never imagined for himself.

The night he bought the jersey, he looked out at the lights of Las Vegas and poured himself a shot. He had started with beer, but it was taking too long. He’d already opened a browser tab to _shop.nhl.com/providence-falconers/jerseys_. The cursor was hovering over a button that said “Add to Cart.” Kent raised a glass to Vegas, knocked back the shot, and poured another.

Kent owns a Jack Zimmermann jersey. So what? People buy all sorts of shit when they’re drunk. It’s not even the right size. It would fit a man with a broader chest, wider shoulders, a longer reach—

***

Kent Parson owns a jersey with Jack Zimmermann’s name on it. It’s buried deep in his closet. Sometimes, when he’s feeling unusually clear-sighted, he appreciates the metaphor.

***

Kent pulls the jersey out after Jack kisses the blond kid on center ice. Kent’s met him, he remembers— his hair is kind of reddish, actually. It just looks blond under the light.

Jack and the kid are living in a fairy tale of a normal life, where they are brave and honest and kind and make good use of the communication skills Jack learned in therapy. The big man upstairs tallies it all up, the results come in, and they get to be happy.

There’s a different version of the fairy tale, one where there are monsters in the closet. Kent is withholding and Jack is secretive and Kent tries to make him feel like shit when he won’t do what he wants. In the story, Kent is possessive and covetous, and he gets to be possessed and coveted in turn, even tucked away in the dark.

Usually when Kent thinks about Jack, he thinks about his mouth. Jack is one of the greatest athletes in the world, and his mother is a supermodel. Jack is not obviously sexy. He looks and acts and talks and dresses like the only sex he’s ever heard of is hockey, and that’s true, but he has his mother’s eyes and lips and cheekbones. Sometimes, if you’re very good and very, very lucky, his focus and dedication turn to you, and you see him, and that’s—

Jack has a great mouth. Possibly even better than his hands, which are insured for millions of dollars. He has these big blue eyes, and he looks up at you.

Very rarely, Kent instead thinks about how badly he wanted to be a Zimmermann. _Wants_ to be a Zimmermann, has since the moment Jack’s dad showed Kent’s dad the door. He’s always had a right to Jack’s name— _Zimms_ was their special thing, from the time they were stupid-young. Even when Jack’s face still did happy and uncomplicated things, he stared an assistant coach into the boards for trying to use it. It’s like _Kenny_ —Jack picked that up from Kent’s mom, and Kent never made him stop.

Kent watches Jack lean down to kiss a blond boy, and just for a moment, he imagines what it would take to earn his name, to stand under the lights on center ice in a jersey that said _Zimmermann_ —

He wears the jersey to sleep that night, and in the morning, he shoves it in the bottom of his kitchen trash can, under the coffee grounds and takeout containers. Then he goes for a run.

**Author's Note:**

> so that's it for Check, Please!, huh? wild. here's an elegy for the loser. technically a morgue file, in that i was going to write more, but didn't. title is a reference to Noah Reid's "Tiff Song."
> 
> questions, comments, and kudos are always appreciated—i’m also on [twitter](https://twitter.com/aetataureateAO3) and [tumblr](https://aetataureate-AO3.tumblr.com/), come say hi!


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